Author's Note: In this fic, the HP cast do NOT have magic. Magic does exist in this world though. As you can see… what with Harry being cursed and everything. Yeh. Understand? Good, good.
Warnings: This is kinda slash, but kinda not. There is NO male-male relationship though there is a Draco/girl!Harry. Yes. Oh, and mentions of sexual harassment. But not graphic. Nah uh.
Chapter OneThe Breton Borders, spring 1193
Lucius Malfoy was in his tent with an obliging whore and a pitcher of the strongest cider he could lay hands upon, when he received the news that his half-brother Draco had ridden into the camp.
It had been raining since dawn, a damp grey mizzle that concealed the tourney field in the mist and chilled the grumbling knights through their cloaks and quilted gambesons to the bone. It was springtide in the world at large, but these Breton borderlands seemed to be suspended in a time of their own. Lucius would not be surprised to see Arthur, Guinevere and the entire court of Camelot emerge on shadowy horses through the rain haze veiling the trees. Certainly less surprised than to be informed that the youth he had last seen as a child of eleven years old at their father's funeral, and whom he thought pursuing a career in the church, was awaiting him at the communal camp fire.
The soldier who had delivered the news, and almost had his head bitten off for his trouble, dropped the tent flap and returned to his dice game.
"Bones of Christ!" Lucius swore, and sat up on his straw pallet. His head swam, and he had to concentrate to focus. Raising the stone cider jug to his lips, he took several hard gulps.
The young women at his side rolled onto her stomach and regarded him through a tangle of greasy blonde hair. Lucius wiped his mouth on his wrist and gave her the jug.
"You have to go?" She looked at him over the rim.
Narcissa was one of the many draggle-tailed women who followed the knights and soldiers from tourney to tourney, war to war, washing, cooking, pleasuring and tending. Some became wives; others belonged to any man with the money to pay for their services. Narcissa was one of the latter, but ambitious to change her status, and Lucius frequently took advantage of her striving. No more striving today, however.
"Unfortunately, sweetheart, I do," he replied with a mingling of regret and irritation. Mindful of his buzzing head, he leaned over to draw on his hose and attach them to the leather straps on his braies.
"Let me do that." Returning the jug, Narcissa knelt before him to secure the trousers to his undergarment. Her fingers brushed against his naked thighs and her full breasts undulated within her chemise.
Lucius closed his eyes and swallowed. "Stop that, you minx," he groaned. "I can't present myself to the lad with this tent pole in my breeches!"
Narcissa giggled. Her hand closed playfully over the bulge at his crotch before he pulled away.
Lucius took another swig of cider, belched, then grimaced at the sour taste that filled his mouth. "Draco." He tested the name on his tongue and tried to interest his wits, but they had been bludgeoned from existence by a combination of drink and thwarted lust. Scowling, Lucius struggled into a shirt of stained yellow linen and laced the frayed drawstring. His mind held the image of a skinny, knock-kneed brat with thin features and huge blue-grey eyes beneath a mop of snowy curls – a changeling, all the other Malfoys being broad and brash. But that memory was at least seven years old, and probably as stale as the garments he had just donned.
"A bold name," said Narcissa huskily.
"You think so?" Lucius fished around for his boots. "Actually he was christened Draconis to please his mother, but she was the only one who ever called him that."
Narcissa raised her brows. "Draconis?" Her tongue fumbled the ending. She had drunk as much cider as Lucius.
"It's Greek," Lucius said with a shake of his head. "After he was widowed, my father went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, but only got as far as the Bosphorus. He came home with some hairs from St Peter's beard, and Draconis's mother. We never thought he would remarry – he already had five sons – but he was an unpredictable old bastard, and I suppose that Anna was far too exotic for him to resist. He always said that she was the greatest treasure in Constantinople." Lucius wriggled his toes down into the boots. In one place the leather sole was almost worn through, and in another the stitches gaped to show flesh. "Ah, Christ," he growled with a spurt of exasperation. "Never mind the treasures of Constantinople, what in the name of Christ's ten toes is the little fool doing here?"
"Perhaps he brings family news?" Narcissa suggested, covering her short chemise with her patched linen gown.
"Hah, the only news to interest me would be that I had come into an inheritance and since there is only Draconis behind me in the line, I doubt that."
"Then let him wait."
Lucius glanced at her with irritation. He preferred Narcissa when her mouth was not occupied with speech. "See if you can make some order of this chaos," he said with a terse gesture around the small tent where scarcely an inch of floor was visible beneath the various items and debris of his nomadic existence.
She smiled sweetly and held out her palm. "Other services cost more," she said sweetly.
Lucius scowled, fumbled down inside his shirt for the purse he wore against his skin and found her a small silver coin. "You're a leech, woman".
"But it's not just blood I suck, is it?" she retorted provocatively as he stamped out of the tent into the soft noonday drizzle.
From the field beyond the tents came the muted thud of hooves bogged down in the soggy turf and the familiar crack of lance on shield as two knights practised their craft in preparation for the opening of the tourney in two days' time. Other eager beavers were about their swordplay, rusting their equipment so that they would have to spend all evening scouring and burnishing. Lucius had long since outlived such enthusiasm.
The first thing he saw as he approached he communal campfire was the horse, its rib bones staring through the dull, mud encrusted hide. Lucius's mouth tightened. A beast in that condition was an indictment of any owner. The knight holding the bridle gave him an eloquent glance. Lucius met it with an arched brow and thrusting past him to the warmth of the flames was brought face to face with Draco.
The young man was as tall and slender as a willow sapling, and shivering so hard that he had little control over his muscles. A cloak of once good blue wool, now dirty and threadbare, hung on his shoulders and was covered by a filthy shawl of coarse homespun for added warmth. A cheap bone pin, bereft of all detail, secured the shawl to the mantle. Tunic and chausses were thin and frayed and the shoes were ten times worse then Lucius's own.
All this the older man assessed with one rapid glance. Nor did he miss the long knife at the lad's belt. The white hair was a dense tangle of eldritch curls, and beneath its heaviness, Lucius perceived the longboat bones of the Malfoys, sleek and bold, but malleable still with youth. The straight white brows, the grey eyes were the legacy of Draco's Byzantine mother, as were the slender, monkish hands. But there was nothing remotely monkish about the rest if Draco's appearance at the moment.
"Well," Lucius's flippant tone shielded a host of conflicting emotions, "this is a surprise. To what do I owe this pleasure, assuming that I am indeed addressing my brother?"
The youth's pupils contracted. His throat bobbed convulsively. "I can prove it," he answered hoarsely. Fumbling beneath the shawl and cloak, he tugged out a leather cord on which hung a small Greek cross of gold set with cabochon amethysts. "It was my mother's. She brought it from Constantinople, and she always wore it on her breast, you know she did."
Their fingers touched as the keepsake was passed across, and Lucius glimpsed angry red abrasions encircling the youth's wrists. The cross was warm from its bed against the boy's skin, its cord slightly damp. The gold gleamed in Lucius's palm, its richness speaking to him of wealth beyond his grasp. Beyond Draco's too. Their father's Byzantine wife had been dowered with little more then this jewel and her exotic beauty.
"You need prove nothing, I know you are kin," Lucius said brusquely, and returned the treasure. "Stow it back where it belongs and do not be too swift to show it about. Men are robed and murdered for less."
Draco struggled and fumbled, his hands shaking almost beyond his control. An unwanted pang off tenderness and rage cut through Lucius's irritation. "What are you doing here, lad?" he asked on a gentler note. "This is no place for an aspiring monk."
The eyes flashed wide and the mobile lips curled into a snarl. "I've never aspired to be a monk! I was pushed into the cloister against my will. I've left it and I'm never going back." He sucked a rapid breath between his teeth. "I've come to join you instead."
"You've what?" Lucius was aghast.
"I want to learn soldiering; I want to become a knight."
Someone laughed, hastily turning the sound into a cough. Lucius's face grew grim, and his lips were so stiff that it was difficult to speak. "You won't learn at my fire," he said brutally. "I'm a mercenary. I earn my bread by the strength of my arm and the skin of my teeth. I cannot afford to be hampered by an untutored weakling on the run from the cloister. Go to our brothers and seek your refuge there."
"They'll only send me back to the church to be beaten again… if they don't beat me first," Draco retorted, his eyes blazing with glints of sapphire. "I'd rather starve!"
"You might have to," Lucius growled, but his mind had settled on the disturbing words 'beaten again' and linked them to the marks on Draco's narrow wrists. He knew he could not turn the lad away in this condition. He'd be dead within the week.
The drizzle increased, the cobweb veils turning to harder individual drops, plump and cold. On the field the knights abandoned their practice. Banners dripped, impotent and limp, from the tops of tents, their brave colours water-stained and dark. Lucius cleared his throat.
"Best come and shelter inside the tent until the rain passes over," he said testily. "But you need not think I am going to keep you."
The young man inhaled to speak, but no words came. Instead, his eyes rolled upwards and his knees buckled. A lifetime of living on his wits catapulted Lucius forward to catch Draco's falling weight before it struck the cauldron tripod. He was shocked at the lightness of the youth, the feel of bones uncushioned by flesh.
"Hey, Lucius, you make a good nursemaid!" crowed a balding knight with a heavy paunch.
"Shut your mouth, Weasley," Lucius snarled.
The man holding Draco's emaciated mount raised the bridle in his right hand to gain Lucius's attention. "I'll tether him with your others, shall I?"
"Do with him what you want, James," Lucius said through his teeth. "Ride him in your next joust if you want!" A string of guffaws and good-natured insults ringing in his ears, Lucius threw Draco over his shoulder and repaired to this tent.
Narcissa had found a besom fro somewhere and was sweeping the debris into a corner with desultory strokes.
"Go to old Poppy and ask her for a flask of ginevra," Lucius commanded brusquely.
"The whore rolled her eyes heavenwards, leaned the besom against the tent pole and went out.
Lucius laid Draco on the pallet and frowned down at him. What in God's name was he going to do with the lad? He had enough ado keeping his own body and soul together without the added burden of a green boy.
Narcissa returned with the ginevra and watched Lucius tug the blankets up to the youth's chin. "How is he going to swallow this?" she asked, doubtfully eyeing the wide rim of Lucius's horn into which she had just poured a generous measure of the colour-less juniper brew.
"Jesu, wench, it's not for him!" snapped Lucius. "Can't you see he's out of his senses?" He snatched the horn from her hands and gulped at it, then choked on its burning strength.
Narcissa advanced to the pallet where, less then a quarter-candle since, she and Lucius had sported. Now the youth's long body occupied that space. He was as still and pale as death, his eye sockets bruised, his bones jutting at his flesh. "Is he truly your brother?"
"Of course he is. Would I give up my bed to a strange whelp not of my blood?" Lucius rested the horn on his thigh and pushed his free hand again and again through his hair. "Last I heard he was a novice monk at Cranwell Priory, but it doesn't look likely he'll wear a tonsure now, does it?"
Narcissa bit her lip. "What are you going to do?"
"Christ, how should I know?"
She considered him through narrowed lids. "You owe me for the ginevra."
"And you owe me an afternoon's bed sport," he retorted. "Count it even."
She glared at him, but e ignored he, all his attention for the still form on the pallet. With a toss of her head, Narcissa flounced from the tent, leaving it half tidied.
The rain pattered down, enhancing the scents of new grass, of budding forest greenery, of fungus, damp and mould. Outside, cut off from him, Lucius could hear the rise and fall of conversation at the fire, a sudden shout of laughter, the dull thud of an axe splitting a log. He finished the ginevra in his horn, and with his belly full of fire, sought the flask.
Draco moaned softly, his eyelids flickered. Lucius thrust a muscular arm beneath his brother's shoulders and raised him up. "Drink," he commanded.
Draco choked and retched on the pungent strength of the liquor. Dusky colour flushed across his cheekbones, and his eyes brimmed.
"Steady, lad, steady," Lucius gentled. "I know it's got a kick like an earl's boot, but you'll fell better for it in a moment."
A grimace twisted Draco's lips. "They used to brew this at Cranwell," he croaked. "The infirmarian kept it locked up, but I stole an entire flask for a dare." His gaze met Lucius's. "Then I drank the lot and was dog sick for three days."
Lucius grunted. "These monks must think themselves well rid of you."
The grimaced returned. "Not half as much as I think myself well rid of them."
"You can't stay here, you know that."
Draco said nothing. An obdurate expression entered his eyes and his lips tightened; Lucius stared at the youth in perplexity. He had known Draco the child - an engaging imp towards whom it had cost nothing to be casually affectionate. Draco on the verge of manhood was a different prospect entirely. The little that Lucius had gleaned thus far suggested that he was dealing with someone who would push his body until it dropped. Strong-willed, stubborn, and reckless to the point of self-destruction; traits that could draw a man to the heights of achievement and then kick him over the edge of the abyss.
The tent flap opened on a draught of moist air. Lucius looked round, half expecting to see Narcissa returning for another assault on his purse, but instead found himself facing the far more daunting prospect of the wife and daughter of James Potter, the knight who had taken charge of Draco's horse.
"Lady Lily?" he said with slight trepidation.
"James told us that your brother has come seeking succour and that he is sick," said Lily Potter. "I have brought some hot pottage from our cauldron, and I thought you might want me to look at him." Her voice was firm and clear, accustomed to being the authority of her family. She stood no taller than Lucius's pungent armpit, and her build was delicate, but the lady Lily was another who possessed a will to eat down others beneath it, no matter her bodily strength.
At fourteen, her daughter, Harry, was half a head taller than her mother and with unmistakable feminine curves. As a child, Harry had angered a witch living on the edge of the Franco-German border. The witch had cursed the boy, making him useless as a knight, or, for that matter, useless as anything male. Once he had reached his teens, the boy, instead of growing facial hair and broadening, had grown hips and his waist had shrunk. A few months ago, when Harry had started his flux, he had panicked about seeing the blood between his legs, screaming at his mother to make it stop. Unfortunately for him, his mother knew little in the way of magick and he had been forced to get used to it. Now, Harry was a girl, or, as she was in many men's minds, a women. A shining plait of black hair, thick as a bell rope, hung down her back, and her eyes were a clear, warm green set beneath strongly marked brows. In her hands, protected by a swathe of quilted linen, was a wooden eating bowl filled with soup.
Lucius's stomach growled at the savoury aroma of the rising steam. "By all means," he aid with a wave of his hand, knowing that refusal was not an option.
Harry knelt gracefully beside the pallet with the soup while Lily fetched Lucius's spare shield and used it as a support to prop up the invalid. Lucius hovered, feeling like an outcast in his own tent.
"You might as well know that Narcissa has gone off with Arthur Weasley," Lily said over her shoulder. "But I suppose you expected nothing less."
Lucius shrugged and affected not to care. "I haven't got a bed now, anyway," he said.
Lily gave him a reproving cluck. Her daughter set about feeding pottage to the invalid, whose hands were too shaky to manage a spoon for himself.
As Draco consumed the hot food, his colour improved and the chills started to subside. "Thank you," he said weakly to the girl. "The last food I ate was three days ago and that was no more than mouldy bread and burned gruel."
"What makes you think you'll eat nay differently here?" Lucius snorted, and was immediately castigated by the mother, her green eyes fierce.
"God save us, Lucius Malfoy, I hope that neither of us is ever thrown on your charity. He is your own brother. Don't you care?"
"Of course I care!" cried Lucius, and commenced tearing at his hair once more. "That's why I don't want him. He's run away from taking the tonsure. What earthly use is he going to be following the tourneys? How in god's name am I going to support him?"
Lily Potter rounded on Lucius with a tongue as sharp as a war sword. "If you had enough silver to waste on a gallon of cider and a slut like that Narcissa, then you have enough to keep the lad at least until he is well enough to send on to someth8ing better," she said forcefully.
"I didn't ask for him to come seeking me like a stray pup."
"No, but he is here, and he is your responsibility."
On then pallet, the invalid closed his eyes. The invalid closed his eyes. The girl pressed her palm to his forehead. "Mama, he's fallen asleep," she said, leaning over him.
Her words filtered to Draco through a haze thicker than the mizzle outside. The scents of dried lavender and wood smoke drifted wraithlike through his awareness,
Another hand, rougher-skinned than the first, touched his brow and then the side of his neck. "A mite feverish," Lily said. "Keep him covered."
The shield was removed from behind his back and he was eased down on to the straw pallet. Blankets were piled over him and their greasy woollen smell filled his nostrils. Draco kept his lids shut and they talked over him, as if he were not there. He learned nothing from their discussion that he did not already know – he had lice and he stank. The sores on his wrists were caused by the abrasion of cords; he had run away from the ordered life of Cranwell Priory, and in its place he had chosen the dangers of the open road.
Heat prickled behind his lids and leaked through his lashes. He prayed for oblivion, but not as the monks had taught him to pray.
He dreamed that he was back at Cranwell, descending the dark dorter stairs to matins in the chapel. Cold stone beneath his feet, his breath a white mist in the midnight deep. Another cowled figure brushed against him. Fingers groped at his genitals and whispered an obscenity in his ear. In blind panic he stuck out, landing a solid blow in the concealed softness of the other's eye socket.
There was a cry, the scuffle of feet struggling for balance, and then the bump, bump of a body tumbling down the stairs. His assailant's descent into what would have been serious injury or death was intercepted by two other novices further down the dark stairway,
In the flickering glimmer from a wax taper, Draco found himself looking into the battered vindictive features of Brother Riddle, the sub-prior, and he knew that no one would believe that he had struck out in self-defence. He possessed a reputation that would preclude all mercy. Past crimes included stealing and drinking the infirmarian's store of medicinal ginevra, writing secular love poems in the scriptorium and singing them in the cloisters. Then there had been two attempts to escape, and gross insubordination to the rule when capture, resulting in severe scourging. The list damned him out of hand. They had shown him lenience before. The raised pink and white welts on his back were a testament to how lenient they could be.
The fetid, musty smell of damp stone invaded his nostrils. He felt as if he had been burned alive. Faces leered at him – skulls clothed in cowls. Skeletons clattered out of the walls and performed the dance of death before his eyes, urging him to caper with them. In blind terror he ran towards the door, but his escape was barred by Brother Riddle, a hoop of keys taunting on his forefinger.
Draco felt bony arms close around him from behind and draw him towards the oozing prison wall. He screamed and resisted, striving to free his wrists of the cords while they bit deeper and deeper.
"Ah, Christ," swore one of the skeletons irritably. "How am I supposed to sleep with you making so much noise?" It shook him by the shoulder, and its foul breath filled his face, making him gag.
"Drake, you purblind fool, it's only a dream, only a dream!" The shaking grew more agitated. One by one the skeletons rattled into the wall and vanished, dragging Brother Riddle in their wake. On a huge gulp of air, Draco surfaced from the nightmare like a swimmer too long underwater.
In the light from a tallow cresset lamp, Lucius's face loomed anxiously over his. Draco felt the fierce pain of fully fleshed fingers digging into his shoulder.
"God's eyes!" Lucius swore. "You were screaming fit to rouse the dead!" There was fear in his voice and his eye whites gleamed.
Draco laughed weakly at his brother's choice of words, but there was little humour in the sound. Sweat-drenched, he lay back against the lumpy bracken pillow. "You're hurting me," he protested.
The fingers relaxed their pressure. A moment later the rim of a goblet was rested on his lips. Remembering the ginevra he hesitated, but when he realised that the liquid was nothing more threatening then cool, watered wine, he took a long, grateful drink.
"Do you want me to leave the light?" Lucius asked awkwardly.
"It doesn't matter… won't make nay difference."
"Then I'll leave it."
Draco turned his head and saw that his brother had assembled a makeshift pallet beside the one that should rightfully be his. "I didn't mean to wake you," he apologised.
"You could have fooled me." Lucius lay down again, thumped the rolled up tunic that was serving as his pillow, and hunched his cloak around his shoulders.
For a while Draco stared at the canvas roof of the tent, watching the flicker of lamp shadows. Beside him, Lucius snored. The sounds, the surroundings, despite their squalor, were oddly comforting. Draco's eyelids drooped, and before long, he was deep in an exhausted slumber.
Taa-Daaaaaaaaaa. That's chapter one done. Phew. I thought it would never end. Anyway, yes, I have made Lucius and Draco brothers, mainly because I am too lazy/stupid/uncreative to come up with a new name for Draco's brother. Yes.
Go on. REVIEW. You know that you want to. Uh hmmmmm. DO IT! Ta.
Rye
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